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Where’s the Point?: Slavoj Žižek and the Broken SwordInternational Journal of Žižek Studies 1 (4). 2007.While Žižek is right to assert both that Heidegger’s political engagement must be confronted as a genuine philosophical challenge and that our modern predicament demands new thinking, I argue that Žižek is wrong to claim that Heidegger made the right step in 1933, even if in the wrong direction. Using the same story as Žižek, G. K. Chesterton’s “The Sign of the Broken Sword,” I argue that Žižek’s sword is also broken, because in the absence of a “big Other,” it is not possible to give an orienta…Read more
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17Introduction to MetaphysicsIn Francois Raffoul & Eric S. Nelson (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 207. 2013.
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A second letter to Emmanuel FayeIn Gegory Fried (ed.), Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2019.
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Introduction : confronting Heidegger : a critical dialogue on politics and philosophyIn Gegory Fried (ed.), Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2019.
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A letter to Emmanuel FayeIn Gegory Fried (ed.), Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield International. 2019.
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19Being and Truth (edited book)Indiana University Press. 2010.In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world.…Read more
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20A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics (edited book)Yale University Press. 2001.Martin Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, first published in 1953, is a highly significant work by a towering figure in twentieth-century philosophy. The volume is known for its incisive analysis of the Western understanding of Being, its original interpretations of Greek philosophy and poetry, and its vehement political statements. This new companion to the Introduction to Metaphysics presents an overview of Heidegger’s text and a variety of perspectives on its interpretation from more th…Read more
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10The Scandal of the Body PoliticJournal of Continental Philosophy 4 (1): 107-130. 2023.Classical liberalism stipulates that individuals may only reliably escape a state of war by joining a body politic whose unity is consolidated and preserved by the formation of a sovereign government. Frederick Douglass, through his own experience of slavery and then as a radical abolitionist critiquing the racialized laws and society of the United States, shows that there is an inherent scandal, a schism in the very idea of a body politic. This scandal cannot be overcome, but Douglass enacts a …Read more
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5Towards a Polemical Ethics: Between Heidegger and PlatoRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.This book presents an original and creative enactment of a confrontation between Heidegger and Plato. Gregory Fried outlines a new approach to ethics and politics combining skeptical idealism and what he calls polemical ethics, and goes on to apply polemical ethics to the crucial questions around fascism and racism.
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36Retrieving phronêsis: Heidegger on the essence of politicsContinental Philosophy Review 47 (3-4): 293-313. 2014.To be human is to be in the world with others, and so what it means to be goes to the root of ethical and political life. One would have to be exceptionally obtuse not to recognize that this age, which we now share as a planetary humanity, is indeed in crisis, despite all our apparent progress if not because of it: the economic and political upheavals that threaten to throw whole regions into uproar, the shifts in climate that threaten the entire globe with unparalleled disruption, the “advances…Read more
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19Interview with Professor Gregory FriedDianoia The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College 6-13. forthcoming.
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26Heidegger, politics and us: Towards a polemical ethics (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (9): 863-875. 2013.
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11Heidegger's Moral Ontology by James D. ReidJournal of the History of Philosophy 58 (3): 626-627. 2020.In this lucid and engaging book focusing on the early Heidegger, James Reid argues that Heidegger sets the foundations for a "phronetic ethics". As Reid later says, "Sein und Zeit could be said to make substantial contributions to 'meta-ethical' reflection on the source of our sense of why, on what basis, we take ourselves to be bound by one thing rather than another". Reid's early Heidegger provides the hermeneutical tools for an ontological meta-ethics that can illuminate "normative questions …Read more
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46Heidegger’s “Polemos”Journal of Philosophical Research 16 159-195. 1991.Despite the rekindling of an often bitter debate as to the meaning of Martin Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism, little has been done to address afresh the texts themselves of the period in question and the problematic to which Heidegger conceived he was applying himself. Defying Enlightenment universalism, Heidegger asserts that meaningful human existence requires a belonging in a particular historical community whose integrity must be sustained in what he calls “Auseinandersetzung…Read more
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55Ethics and finitude: Heideggerian contributions to moral philosophy (review)Continental Philosophy Review 38 (1-2): 131-135. 2005.This essay applies elements of Heidegger thought to ethics as a practical discipline. The radical finitude of human existence is not only an ontological matter; it is also located in the moral life, in the ways we come to "be" ethically. Moral values are shown to be responses to finite limit-conditions and to be finite themselves in their appropriation and performance. The notion of being-in-the-world is used to show that the moral sphere cannot be understood as an "objective" or a "subjective" …Read more
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47What Is Metaphysics? Original Version / Was ist Metaphysik? UrfassungPhilosophy Today 62 (3): 733-751. 2018.
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95What is the philosophical significance of Sen's 'Liberal Paradox'?Philosophical Papers 40 (1): 129-147. 2011.This paper reflects on a simple, ingenious and celebrated result by Amartya Sen, ‘The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal’ (1970). Sen’s result, sometimes called the 'Liberal Paradox', has attracted — particularly in the years soon after its publication — a vast literature, including responses and reflections from Sen himself. Much of the literature involves attempts to ‘escape’ the Liberal Paradox by proposing ways to avoid or resolve the problem it seems to identify. But despite the extensive …Read more
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22A Challenge to Divine PsychologismTheology and Science 14 (2): 175-189. 2016.Alvin Plantinga proposes that mathematical objects and propositions are divine thoughts. This position, which I call divine psychologism, resonates with some remarks by contemporary thinkers. Plantinga claims several advantages for his position, and I add another: it helps to explain the glory of mathematics. But my main purpose is to issue a challenge to divine psychologism. I argue that it has an implausible consequence: it identifies an entity with God’s relation to that entity. I consider an…Read more
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27Taking dictatorship seriously: a reply to QuesadaPublic Choice 158 (1): 243-251. 2014.Antonio Quesada (Public Choice 130:395–400, 2007) argues that a dictator has no more than two to three times the ‘average power’ of a non-dictatorial voter. If Quesada is correct, then his argument has major consequences for social choice theory; for instance, it warrants reconsidering the significance of Arrow’s Theorem. If Quesada is incorrect, however, then his position is dangerously misleading. This paper argues that Quesada is wrong. His argument depends on his own formal account of power,…Read more
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115Teaching Arrow’s Theorem: Clarification of a Step in a Standard ProofTeaching Philosophy 33 (2): 173-186. 2010.Amartya Sen has recently urged that political philosophers pay attention to social choice theory in their deliberations about justice. However, despite its merits, social choice theory is not standardly part of undergraduate political philosophy. One difficulty is that it involves symbolic logic and difficult concepts. We can reduce this challenge by making the material no harder than it needs to be. I consider the standard proof of Arrow’s Theorem, a seminal result. Kenneth Arrow does not expli…Read more
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University of Cape TownSenior Lecturer
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa